The ‘Lucy Child’
More good news for creationists

22 September 2006

A young individual of the same species as the famous ‘Lucy’ has just
been unveiled.1 Found
in Dikika, Ethiopia, this specimen is remarkably well preserved. It is of
a young female, probably about three years old. The ‘age’ is supposed
to be 3.3 million years. It has taken five years so far to carefully remove
much of the skeleton from the sandstone. The job is not complete; there may
be years more work to confirm exactly what the foot bones looked like, for instance.

Why it’s important

There was much fuss when ‘Lucy’ (later named Australopithecus afarensis)
was discovered. Here at last, evolutionists seemed to have a wonderful ‘ancestor
candidate’—one which supposedly walked upright, and had a near-perfect
mix of ape and human characteristics.

However, as inevitably happens, things started to look different as time went on
and as anatomists carefully studied the fossil bones of Lucy and other specimens
of her genus, Australopithecus [cf. the same thing
with alleged whale intermediate Pakicetus]. Several researchers
using objective computer techniques (like evolutionist Dr Charles Oxnard) pointed
out that the features as a whole were not intermediate at all between apes and humans.
They also pointed out that their method of locomotion was not upright in the human
manner, either. Furthermore, the fingers and toes of other specimen’s
of Lucy’s kind seemed to be long and curved, like apes that swing in the trees.
Their arms were long, like those of tree-climbers. [For more details, see
the Australopithecus afarensis section of the overview
Fossil evidence for alleged apemen—Part 2: non-Homo hominids
from Journal of Creation]

Keen to hang onto their vision of an ‘apeman’, it was argued that these
were just evolutionary ‘leftovers’. It became harder to defend,
however, when the Lucy skeleton itself was shown to have the same wrist mechanism
(that ‘locks’ the wrist for knucklewalking) as do chimps and gorillas—see
Lucy was a knuckle-walker and the more technical
Did Lucy walk upright?, and the more recent Lucy: walking
tall—or wandering in circles? (Was this also a leftover?
If so, why hadn’t natural selection eliminated this if it was no longer used?)

What has been revealed seems to hammer home the nails in the coffin [of the idea
of human ancestry].

Some might have tried to maintain the excitement, based on the evidence that some
australopithecines must have had the capacity for at least rudimentary speech.
This evidence was that the inside of their skulls had impressions of the pattern
on the brain surface, which showed that they had the same sorts of patterns as we
do in the areas of our brain used for language. But that evidence, too, took
a nose-dive when it was shown that the same patterns are there in some living apes,
too, but are used only for non-linguistic purposes (see also
Mind by design: interview with neuroscientist and part-time ‘ape-man’
researcher Peter Line and Monkeying
around with the origins of language).

Of course, while this evidence was accumulating, countless evolutionary pictures
and displays showing ‘Lucy’ with what were drawn to be ‘human-ape’
features (e.g. human-looking hands and feet) were piling up, too. Though contradicted
by the evidence, it was too hard, it seemed, to modify all those displays.

Better preservation = more information

So this discovery of an even better preserved3specimen of Lucy’s kin (it is so similar, that it is not just put in the
same genus, but the same species) is something that would make an informed creationist’s
ears prick up even before knowing the details. And sure enough, what has been revealed
seems to hammer home the nails in the coffin even deeper, if anything.

Adjusted for body size, the brain was not significantly larger than an ape’s.

A complete hyoid bone (associated with the larynx) was found which was utterly chimplike.
No evidence there of any speech capacity, as some had hoped.

The one complete fingerbone is curved, like that of a chimp. Curved fingers are
designed for grasping in the trees.

The shoulderblade is gorilla-like—designed for tree-climbing and knucklewalking,
not upright gait.

The organ of balance characteristics in the skull confirm that its locomotion was,
like a chimp’s, not habitually upright.

An associated Nature commentary on the article states, diplomatically,
of the last three of these that ‘all three lines of evidence suggest that
the locomotion of A. afarensis was unlikely to have been restricted to
walking on two feet.’ 4The
author, a renowned paleoanthropologist, concedes that this creature’s features
are ‘much more ape-like than those of later taxa that are rightly included
in our own genus, Homo,’5(compare this analysis in our Journal of Creation of one of this author’s
other papers6,
The non-transitions in ‘human evolution’—on evolutionists’
terms.)

To the author of the Nature commentary, looking at the ‘Lucy child’
through an evolutionary ‘lens’, this is because it is ‘primitive’,
i.e. it hasn’t evolved far enough yet.

It makes far more sense to go with the straightforward understanding of the evidence:

The reason why this specimen looks so apelike is because it is a member of a (now-extinct)
apelike group of creatures, separately created to people and other groups of apes.
Indeed, Oxnard long ago argued from multivariate analysis that australopithecines
are more distinct from both humans and chimpanzees than these are from each other.7

The reason why it has all those anatomical features associated with non-human locomotion
is, quite simply, that it was apelike; apes have non-human locomotion, and no apes
are habitual upright walkers.

Dikika region, Ethiopia

The ‘Lucy child’, then, brings into focus all in one beautiful specimen
issues which have individually been apparent and have produced an accumulating weight
of evidence against the idea of human ancestry. All this must be getting keenly
felt ‘within the trade’. Commentaries on this specimen seem to
have little throwaway lines here and there whose purpose seems to be to reassure
us that there was some reason for previous researchers to have thought that afarensis
walked upright. And/or that it may have done (something like) this some
of the time—as does the living pygmy chimp. But that, as everyone put
on the spot would agree, is not true bipedalism.8

Hopefully, as the remaining anatomical features of the ‘post-cranial skeleton’
are teased painstakingly out of the rock, we will get even more detailed evidence
of what afarensis, and australopithecines in general, looked like.
It is highly likely that it will further strengthen the already overwhelming case
that the australopithecines were not man’s ancestor. Even some
evolutionists agree, incidentally. The problem for the others, one that is
probably making it hard for them to let go, is that there is no other candidate
in the wings.

If history is any guide, that will not last long. Given a combination of often
fragmentary evidence, human desire for glory and the powerful need to fill this
evolutionary vacuum, another decades-long round of speculation about a totally new
group of creatures could well arise, and mislead millions. At least, that
is, before it, too, gives way to the weight of evidence.

Related Products

Dr Batten deals with the claimed apeman fossils in the evolutionary tree promoted
by the Smithsonian and shows how the stories do not add up. The fossil patterns
fit a post-Flood dispersal of apes and a somewhat later post-Babel dispersal of
humans. Shows how detailed illustrations have been imaginatively created from fragmentary
fossils!

Incidentally, in spite of the fact that evolutionists affirm
that the high preservation is evidence of rapid burial, most likely in a flood,
we would think that this was almost certainly a post-Flood event. I.e. a local
flood, not the worldwide Flood of Noah. Return to Text

Of course; this is because all of those in that genus (e.g.
erectus, neanderthalensis) are, quite simply, people—descendants
of Adam. And even some evolutionists have argued that they should be reassigned
to the same species name as ourselves. Return to Text

In all of this, it should not be assumed that if these creatures
had turned out to be bipedal, that would have proved that they were humanity’s
ancestors. God might have created bipedal creatures that are now extinct.
But the point is to show how incredibly weak even this ‘showcase’ example,
of which bipedalism was the highlight, is for evolutionists. Return
to Text

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